A Game of Toilet Skeleton

My friend Slasher wrote a journaling game. I am gonna play it. You can find her work here, this particular game should be up soon.

Before I begin in earnest, the content warning from the game seems appropriate to provide here:
“Some prompts and situations in this game contain references to self -harm, violence, starvation, deprivation, isolation, gallows humor, and chronic illness. This is a game in which the viewpoint character is long dead.”

I am going to play a medium game. I roll 2d3+1 and get 5 in total.

The room my skeleton is found in is a dining room. It is in a government office building. It died due to “internal factors (despair, self-inflicted wound, overconfidence).” The loot it has near it is “Buffing supplies (drugs, skill-increasing clothing, cybernetics),” of common rarity (11 on a d20 table). It is guarded by robots.

I decide to imagine the physicality of the skeleton by dropping a cluster of 7D6 and interpreting it as roughly person shaped. My skeleton is seated with its legs extending sideways, arms out supporting it.



It is time to begin writing, starting with the final entry before death. Looking at the ingredients present, I decide that this skeleton was someone who was working with the robots now loose in here. The “buffing supplies” including cybernetics makes me think this was perhaps someone testing a brain implant that would allow direct interfacing with the security bots.

The Final Entry:
Security camera footage. It moves, and an arm wielding a laser gun extends — it is the POV of a security bot. A man’s voice (the skeleton): “No intruders on this floor — wait. Life signs above. How did someone get up there?” The bot rushes up a flight of stairs. “It was supposed to be secure! Control room compromised. I repeat, control room compromised.” The footage shows a man standing in the dining room, entranced, in front of a pile of computers assembled into an improvised control station. Wires trail into the room from many directions. The robot fires on the man, just as realization sets in — the man looks up at the robot he controls, opening his mouth to shout something as he sees himself blasted across the room from two perspectives.

Second-to-last-entry:
Video footage: the same man is being interviewed by a medical professional. He has a slightly vacant expression. “Yes, sometimes it becomes hard to return to an organic perspective, but I’m confidant that the risks are manageable. I was working on a way to more cleanly signify to the brain, but we had to deploy it early. You know, what with…” he jerks his head towards something out-of camera. The interviewer makes a noise of sympathy. “And yes I think I should take a break from it, but my requests have not been approved. And when are they gonna sign of on that now?”

Third-to-last:
Security footage, two feeds. A closed door with a window, the man inside hooked up to a machine while two guards stand outside. A small robot is in another room. After several seconds it moves around awkwardly and the man in the room cheers. The guards murmur to each other — “that thing is coming for our jobs, right?” “Shut up they have audio.”

Fourth-to-last:
A diary entry. The man-to-be-skeletonized agonizes over the difficulty of his task of seamless robot-human interfacing. He is so sure it could work but he needs a break! His head feels fried from time spent working late. Five different time off requests rejected — the fear of impending war has the defense contractors not letting up.

Fifth-to-last:
A technical proposal for seamless human-robot interfacing. The pitch is for a robot that can act autonomously but be immediately logged into by an operator to be seen through and commanded. A comic-styled illustration shows a single brave troop with a platoon of robo-soldiers, all saluting the US flag.